Donald Ivan Punchatz, a distinguished fantasy and science fiction artist who also illustrated the acclaimed Doom package art and logo, has passed away on October 22 at the age of 73 following cardiac arrest 11 days earlier. The Doom community would like to send its sincere condolences to the Punchatz family. Rest in peace Don Punchatz!

The Doom box art and logo encapsulated all that the game did - i.e. something that went beyond what a PC game meant traditionally at the time, and into the realm of creating a world people could actually be immersed in. It perfectly fitted the game.

RIP. Looking at the Ultimate Doom poster it's hard to believe one person did all that. If you zoom it to actual size and look at the demon in the bottom left corner, it's actually quite frightening. The expressions on the marines' faces were done very well, too.

This is fairly sad news, that was such a great piece of art. (Although 73 years old isn't exactly so unusal to pass away at... yes, people live longer than that, but it's still expected...)

Scuba Steve said:
Doom's box art is a testament to great video game covers. It's a goddamn lost art.

I wouldn't say it's totally lost... although generic in-game screenshots are plentiful... Borderlands comes immediately to mind for at least having creative boxart, although it's definitely not the best (and probably not the best example either, but like I said, it was the first thing to come to mind)

L4D and Borderlands are pretty decent as far as covers go, I like them... but they just lack the brilliance and creativity of old game covers. Games like Doom and the other games of that era inspired the Urban Brawl boxart.